How Long does it Take to Build a lens?
Getting some great questions on lenses so far guys, keep it up! I’ll continue to answer them here as we move along.
First question I want to tackle relates to how long it takes me to build lenses.
From Lewis:
Hey Joe!
Maybe you could also post about how long the lenses take you - I know you make lenses very quickly!
That would also show people just how much is going into the challenge.
Nice idea btw. Good luck with it!
Lewis
And a follow up from David:
good lens! I agree with Lewis I would be interested to see how long it took you to put it together.
thanks
The answer? Including keyword research, each lens probably took me about an hour with actual lens creation time in the workshop at about half of that.
I use a few different principles that allow me to build lenses this quickly:
Practice : I’ve built a lot of lenses in the last few years. Hundreds and hundreds. I know where all the modules are and what they do. Knowing what tools you have and how they work can help you organize your thoughts as you build your lens. Knowing you will need 3 video modules ahead of time and adding them all at once instead of one by one as you go will save you lots and lots of time.
Module Formulas and Templates : (more on this in a later post) Usually I’ll build lenses in groups. The first one or two I’ll play around with modules for a while then once I see which combination is working best, I’ll set up a lens template. The first two lenses I built about dehydrators have similar modules in them but not identical. As I go on building out the niche, I’ll start a template with probably 5-7 modules in it. That will allow me to get my creation time down under half an hour a lens, easy.
Evergreen Modules : I’m a huge fan of Evergreen modules (I’ve talked about them before and will devote some more time to them soon) . They make lens building go super fast and help accomplish a lot of basic content/seo principles that I want to achieve.
Focus : I try to make lenses about fairly specific topics so they are focused and respond to what the searcher/visitor is looking for in a very precise way. If a lens starts to lose focus on me it will often spiral out of control and result in something of a mess that doesn’t get any attention from anyone.
Tools: I use a few basic and free tools to help me do some things faster. I’ll post about these later as well.
Gotta run for now, lenses to build and work to do!
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I’m really interested in following you and working through this process, Capt’n. Seriously good stuff for you to do.
My first question — Can you tell us which modules you have used in the initial three lenses and why? OR — Is there a way to “view page source” or something and tell which modules you’ve used?
I’m still pretty limited in my own lens building and sort of a “newbie,” so I’m not able to tell looking at the lenses which modules you’ve used.
Thanks.